What's Behind Indonesia's Plan to Import Used Trains from Japan? - Tempo.co English

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - President Director of Indonesia's state-owned railway operator, KAI, Bobby Rasyidin, stated the company plans to import secondhand trains from Japan to transition from inadequate domestic production.

"This serves as a transition," Bobby said in Jakarta on Wednesday, September 23, 2026, as quoted by Antara, when asked about the plan to import used electric trains (KRL) from Japan.

According to him, there is a pressing need to import used trains, considering that many existing KRLs are 40 years old or older.

He explained that importing used trains is a better option timewise, as once approved, it only takes one to two months to process. This differs from importing new trainsets, which takes one to two years and can disrupt domestic train production.

"If we import new trains, domestic train production will be disrupted. If we import used trains, this is merely a transition," he said.

According to Bobby, domestic train production is not yet able to meet current demand. Bobby added that KAI will import 23 trainsets, consisting of seven SF12 trainsets and 16 SF8 trainsets, to replace several trainsets that are more than 40 years old.

"We propose that for these new trains, seven trainsets with SF-12s and 16 trainsets with SF-8s. Why are we differentiating between the SFs? Because there are still platforms at stations that are not ready for 12 train cars," he said.

Bobby added that the trains, which will be imported from Japan, are planned to be used for the next 10 years while his side ramps up domestic production capacity.

"We plan to deploy them for 10 years, and we will implement this immediately because there have been many complaints (from service users)," he said.